Best Cities For Young Professionals

Best Cities For Young Professionals
Matt Woolsey, 06.21.07, 6:00 PM ET

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Head to the Big Apple, and your chances of getting the corner office might not be as far off as you think.

That's because New York City tops our list as the No. 1 city for young professionals.

That likely comes as a shock to, well, no one. Many of America's best companies, as determined by Forbes rankings of the best 400 big businesses and best 200 small businesses, including financial giant Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ) and media conglomerate News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ) are in New York. Throw in New York's bars, clubs and world-class dining, and you get a city teeming with young professionals.

In Pictures: Best Cities For Young Professionals

San Francisco clocked in at No. 2 and Atlanta at No. 3. Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Boston and Seattle filled spots four through seven, and Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Denver closed out the top 10.

Behind The Numbers
Our list was compiled by tracking where the graduates of top universities across the country ended up 10 years after commencement; where the best business opportunities exist; which cities had the most young and unmarried people; and which cities paid young professionals the best.

To see where graduates of elite schools chose to pursue their careers, we looked at Class of 1997 alumni location data from six elite universities across the country--Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern and Rice. The data indicated where graduates have settled 10 years later, and where their professional lives have matured.

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We then excluded alumni that remained close to school. Harvard grads in Massachusetts--nixed; Dukies who stayed in North Carolina--gone; Stanford Cardinal roosting in California--tossed. The goal: to determine which cities offer such strong opportunities for young professionals that they're willing to pick up and move across the country for them.

Some cities are bigger than others, of course. So we adjusted where elite grads ended up against overall population size to measure the respective concentrations of young professionals. This allowed smaller cities such as Portland and Austin to compete equally with heavyweights such as New York and Los Angeles.

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Then we stirred the locations of prized jobs into the mix. Each year, Forbes selects America's 400 best big businesses and 200 best small businesses. We used the locations of those 600 companies to determine which cities had the best professional opportunities for the under-35 set.

In metro areas across the country, costs per square foot are mushrooming. To blame? Consumer demand for rare properties with a full compliment of amenities. Click here for a sampling of America's priciest apartments.

Money is important too. To figure out how far yearly income will go, we measured cities' variations in starting salary using data from New York-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting and adjusted it for cost of living with our own Forbes index; the idea being that the more greenhorn grads a city can attract with a decent salary to cost of living ratio, the more likely they'll stay and develop in that area.

Of course, even the most driven young professionals need to let off steam. With that in mind, the final metric was measured which cities had the highest share of never-married people in their 20s and 30s. Never married is an important qualifier. For example, of the 40 largest cities, Salt Lake City has the third-highest population share of people ages 25 to 34, but its standing as No. 27 in the never-married category really puts a damper on the nightlife.

The bottom 10 cities were brought down by a variety of causes. Salary to cost of living submarined Miami, Norfolk, Va., and San Antonio. The inability to attract top grads and top companies hurt Detroit and Las Vegas, and all our measurements converged on Tampa, Fla., beating it down to last place on our list.

Where We Want To Live 2007

Where We Want To Live 2007
Lacey Rose, 01.09.07, 12:01 AM ET

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The ball has dropped and holiday revelers are busy avoiding carbs as they sweat off their holiday pounds at the gym.

Well, enough of that.

Instead, grab a comfortable seat and join us as we drool over the crop of out-of-this-world homes currently for sale. A bloated U.S. inventory--a natural result of a softening market--combined with increasingly accessible international options means there are an extraordinary number of breathtaking properties to go ga-ga over.

But for some at the high-end, a home may not suffice. Today’s moneyed are no longer looking to simply purchase a roof over their head; they are looking to purchase a lifestyle. And as the rich keep getting richer, what is desired, never mind what is available, grows more and more extravagant.

In Pictures: Where We Want To Live 2007

For the health-minded, that means life at a spa. Tired of schlepping from the yoga studio to the organic supermarket, these types prefer to have it all under one roof, which explains why spa residences have picked up steam in recent years. According to Susie Ellis, the president of SpaFinder, a research clearinghouse and information service on the spa industry, more than 200 U.S. spa residences have opened their doors in the last three years.

And to Ellis, it makes sense. “Active baby boomers are just not interested in the term retirement or retirement community,” she says. “Instead, they want to look great, feel great and be active. That’s why a spa community is appealing; it says vibrancy and living.”

One such destination, Miraval Living, a spa and wellness residence backed by former Time Warner (nyse: TWX - news - people ) Chairman Steve Case, will open its doors this summer on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The unique facility boasts more than 300 luxury apartments priced between $650,000 and $3.5 million and comes complete with spa, fitness and healthy eating facilities. And as if that weren’t enough to keep wellness wannabes on track, the facility offers personal advisers for every resident.

For others, living well implies a tropical paradise complete with white sand beaches and waterfront access. According to David Hehman, co-chairman and CEO of EscapeHomes.com, a Web site that specializes in luxury second-home listings, water is by far the single largest recreational amenity that wealthy and discerning buyers’ desire.

“Whether it is a condominium in Miami or a place in Cabo San Lucas, I think people really look for water and warm weather when they want to escape,” he says.

HG Christie, a Bahamas-based real estate firm, has a collection of island fare that certainly fits that bill. Among the firm’s properties is a 3.75 acre Paradise Island estate, which boasts more than 6,000 square feet of living space, wrap-around patios and waterfront views. Sun worshippers will also enjoy the $32.5 million property’s white sand beach and nearly 2,000 feet of water frontage, to say nothing of its heated swimming pool, three docks and helipad.

Those with wanderlust will want to check out The World, a 644-foot, 12-deck vessel, which offers its 200 residents the adventures of the sea combined with the comforts of home. In addition to 165 privately owned apartments, which range in price from $825,000 to $7.3 million, the yacht offers four restaurants, a spa, a library and athletic facilities. This luxury sea community spends two-and-a-half days on average at each port, which residents select based on their personal interests.

But it’s not just the types of homes and the lifestyle they offer that have changed as the concept of a dream home has evolved and price tags skyrocketed. The properties’ amenities, which range from his-and-her bathrooms to on-site helipads, have grown increasingly extravagant as well.

“Today, your home can be packed with amenities and offer his-and-her features that luxury homeowners of a decade ago never even dreamed about,” says Laurie Moore-Moore, president of the Dallas-based Institute for Luxury Home Marketing. Among them: spa baths, which include rain showers and chromotherapy tubs, as well as his-and-her home offices, garages and kitchens. Guest cottages, pool houses, butlers’ pantries and even ballrooms are also increasingly common requests among wealthy buyers.

A far less taxing way to enjoy the New Year, indeed.

Eastern Europe's Priciest Properties

Eastern Europe's Priciest Properties
Matt Woolsey, 10.15.07, 6:00 AM ET

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In Eastern Europe, where home prices are exploding, developers aren't simply transforming decades-old apartment buildings into luxurious condominiums.

Here, taking advantage of the residential real estate boom means gutting a historic property for flats or trying to sell a castle to casino operators.

And no wonder. From second-quarter 2005 to second-quarter 2006, median home prices in Bulgaria improved at a 12.2% clip. Bulgarian real estate jumped 27.1% last year. Properties in Latvia's Riga market improved by 37.7% last year, and from second-quarter 2006 to second-quarter 2007, those in the Tallinn, Estonia, market grew by 20.2%, according to Newmark Knight Frank, an international real estate investment firm

In Pictures: Eastern Europe's Priciest Properties

These numbers, however, do not apply to the housing stock as a whole.

A significant portion of Russia's real estate boom, for example, is being attributed to new homes in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where prices last year rose 115% and 92%, respectively.

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"Numerous apartment projects entered the Moscow market [last year]," says Ekaterina Thain, director of Newmark Knight Frank's Russian operations. "Most of them within the Moscow International Business Center, Moscow City site," a prominent business district.

Top Spots
In these cities, property values aren't uniformly appreciating; rather, the new moneyed are building bigger, better homes. One such property, the 2.49 billion ruble ($100 million), 100,000-square-foot Eurasia estate built this year just outside Moscow, features Russian and Turkish baths, a full-sized indoor swimming pool and a state-of-the-art security system. The home is being built as a spec house.

Châteaux or state houses now in private hands represent another segment of the region's growing luxury-housing market. These are now being listed as owners try to cash in at the top of the market. One example is a 62,000-square-foot, neo-Baroque castle 80 miles outside Prague in the Czech Republic. It was originally built for a Bohemian duke, sits on 50 acres and is now being offered for 106.8 million Czech korunas ($5.5 million) and marketed as a great site for a hotel or casino.

Two others, one in Latvia and one in the Czech Republic, used to serve as official state properties. The Latvian home, in Riga, is a luxurious estate overlooking the Baltic Sea that was used as a governor's mansion, as well as an official state home by the Soviets, Nazis and then again the Soviets in their various occupations between 1938 and 1991. The Czech mansion, located in Vysocina, outside Prague, was used as an entertainment venue for the Czechoslovakian government between 1948 and 1989 and features all the finishings and refinements of a property used to host foreign dignitaries.

The increasing availability of credit, which has long been very expensive in many Eastern European markets, is helping keep regional sales strong.

Pireaus, a Greek bank, seems to be expanding its loan packages in Bulgaria on a daily basis, as more than 30,000 British investors alone have already flocked to the country to take advantage of the growing real estate and tourism markets.

"The low property prices in Bulgaria have made the market extremely appealing for investors," says Irini Tzortzoglou, head of retail banking at Pireaus. "Many are buying properties off-plan with a view to obtaining capital gain and rental income from tourism once completed."

Still, industry experts say the recent price inflation isn't boundless. These rapid price growth figures don't mean that there is a price bubble about to burst and that Eastern European luxury real estate is anywhere close to the correction being felt in the U.S. market; only that the markets find themselves in the midst of a huge run-up.

"Things are not moving as fast as they used to move," says Philippe Bogdanov, general director of Kirsanova Realty in Moscow. "The reason why is that the prices grew so rapidly, and there's a limit on how much prices can rise."

America's Best & Worst Housing Markets

America's Best & Worst Housing Markets
Matt Woolsey, 01.25.07, 3:00 PM ET

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Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

While speculators and flippers in places such as Boston and San Diego are running for cover, in other parts of the country they are basking in robust residential sales. Third-quarter median home prices last year climbed 14.6% in Seattle, Wash.; 14.3% in El Paso, Texas; and 12.3% in Portland, Ore.

They also increased by roughly 5% in Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, Calif.; Austin, Texas; Jacksonville, Fla.; and Charlotte, N.C., over the year before, according to the National Association of Realtors.

In Pictures: Best-Performing Metro Areas
In Pictures: Worst-Performing Metro Areas

Prices also jumped along the Gulf Coast, a good sign for Post-Katrina economic recovery efforts. Median home prices increased by 15.5% in Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss.; 14.1% in Baton Rouge, La.; and 7.6% in New Orleans, La.

Price figures are based on total metropolitan areas as defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget. So, while the New York City metro area grew at a solid, but not blockbuster, rate of 3.6%, officials from New York’s Finance Department say the five boroughs grew at 19% in 2006--twice the 2005 figure--with prices in Brooklyn and the Bronx swelling 27.6% from the previous year.

In the rest of the country, median home prices on average dropped 1.2%. The most affected area was the Northeast, where median home prices plunged 4.8% over the last year.

Those homeowners would be better off heading west where realtors expect prices to continue to rise.

“There are still plenty of people out there looking to buy homes, our local economy is holding strong and there are a lot of people moving into the city,” says Kristine Losh, a broker with Ewing & Clark. “Geographically, Seattle is long and thin and surrounded by water. There’s not much room, so you’ve got a lot of people trying to get the same small amount of land.”

Behind The Numbers
Cities showing gains exhibited high job growth and positive net migration figures. They were also areas in which home affordability remained close to national averages through the boom, making them less prone to the corrections and adjustments seen in overheated markets.

Cities most affected by the downturn were old-line industrial markets such as Detroit or Lansing, where local economies are suffering the effects of mass layoffs in the auto industry.

In the Northeast, the number of jobs created last year grew only 0.8%, according to the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP), versus the 1.3% national growth rate. If that's not bad enough, NEEP’s projections for increases in gross regional product and per capita income also lag significantly behind national averages.

As a result, people are leaving the area. The latest United States Census net migration figures indicate that 4.6% more people left the region than entered it last year. The regional real estate market also experienced a 4.8% drop in median prices. On the flipside, the South’s economic conditions lead to the nation’s best migration rate (3.4 %) and subsequently, at -.1%, the nation’s best median home price growth figures.

Fools Rush In
From 2004 to 2005, median homes prices in most of the cities that are now resisting downturn, such as Austin and Charlotte, grew at slower rates than the national average.

This made them less susceptible to the sudden swings of a high-flying, highly speculative market such as Miami. In this area, median home price exploded from $232,000 in 2003, to $391,000 at the end of 2005, driven by a market in which builders couldn’t keep pace with demand. Miami’s real estate market has since corrected, moving down 5.6% from its peak.

“In the highest growth markets, there were a lot of folks who panicked when they saw prices going up by 8, 10 or 12% a year and rushed to buy in,” says Kermit Baker, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“Once prices started to fall [in high growth markets], speculators got an itchy trigger finger because prices went up so high that it was very difficult to buy; affordability had gotten out of hand and people worried that if they waited six to eight months to sell, they’d be left holding the bag. The result is a short-term adjustment.”

Steadier, more tempered growth translates into a stable real estate conditions because affordability remains in line with local economic conditions.

“In markets with sharp transitions, there was a lot of speculative, short-run buying” says Lawrence Yun, a senior economist with the National Association of Realtors. “In places like Texas or North Carolina, home prices are affordable and there is a good job creating the environment. In Seattle, the job market is strong and while home prices are above the national average, they are affordable by West Coast standards.”

What’s more, when home values grow too quickly, builders rush to keep up and when the party is over, construction slows and there is excess inventory. For example, this week the nation’s largest home builder, D.R. Horton (nyse: DHI - news - people ), reported a 60% quarterly drop in earnings.

Add to the mix speculators anxious to dump property and the result is a jump in residential vacancy rates. Since the end of 2005, when the housing bubble began to pop, nationwide vacancy rates have jumped to 2.5%, a nearly 50% increase from the 10-year average. Higher vacancy rates give buyers leverage in negotiating price because sellers have excess supply.

Cautious Optimism
Despite the numbers, some in sluggish areas remain hopeful.

In cities such as Boston, where median sales prices were beaten down 4.3% from the 2005 peak of $431,000, realtors say the market is still strong.

“The biggest difference from 2004 and 2005 is that sellers are willing to negotiate on their prices--bidding wars aren’t taking place,” says David Green, a broker at Otis & Ahearn. “The bottom line is, if you price your home right, it will move; you would not see that happening in a downward market.”

Economists are similarly optimistic for the coming year.

“There’s no urgency right now because people think that if they wait six months, they can get a cheaper price,” says Baker. “When they think the market has bottomed out, they’ll buy back in.”

World's Most Overpriced Real Estate Markets

World's Most Overpriced Real Estate Markets
Matt Woolsey, 08.24.07, 6:00 PM ET

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Buy a home in Monaco and you'll enjoy iconic beaches, glamorous casinos, a renowned arts and music scene, pulsating nightlife and boutique-packed boulevards.

You'll also pay for it.

That's because the Mediterranean principality tops our list of the world's most overpriced real estate markets. The rankings were compiled by calculating an effective annualized rate of return on a property based on annual cash flows derived from renting and adjusted for capital gains tax, transaction fees, operating costs and maintenance, appreciation and inflation. We then flipped the return rate to resemble the more familiar price-to-earnings (P/E) measure.

In Pictures: World's Most Overpriced Real Estate Markets

Monaco's housing market earned a P/E ratio of 74.07. What's more, the well-earned moniker of "tax haven" apparently doesn't apply to transaction costs, which rack up to a 20% premium when buying and selling a property.

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Rome landed at No. 2 with a P/E of 50.51; it's a slow growth market, which remains very expensive. Representing North America in the world's top 10 were Los Angeles (5th place at 26.88) and Vancouver (6th at 26.81). For a list of America's most overpriced real estate markets, click here.

The relationship between rental yields and housing costs matters because a low rental yield is a good indication of a stretched market--one that has a bubble--since these markets are more likely to face downward price pressures or grow at a slower rate. Possible higher returns attracts more buyers and pushes up prices. India's disparate markets illustrate this. Bangalore has a 9.7% rental yield helping it to an 8.74 P/E, a good sign the market has room to grow. Last year prices climbed there by 16.5%. Mumbai, which posted a P/E of 17.21%, saw prices grow 6.6%.

Behind The Numbers
To arrive at our numbers, we inverted the effective annualized rate of return so each figure resembled a price-to-earnings measure that was easier to read. Think about each market like you would a stock: the higher the price-to-earnings figure, the more you have to pay to get one dollar of return. Many of the world's most expensive markets, such as London and New York, didn't make the top 10, and were beaten out by less expensive markets that had lower yields and smaller rates of appreciation.

We measured 50 financial capitals in every continent except Antarctica. For the most part this meant one city from each country--London for Great Britain, Bangkok for Thailand, Warsaw for Poland--but for countries like India, China, the U.S., Australia, Canada and Switzerland where there were multiple, distinct financial centers we measured a variety of cities: Geneva and Zurich in Switzerland and Shanghai and Beijing in China, for example.

Our valuations were based on data from GlobalPropertyGuide.com, an international real estate research firm. For each market, it assumed no debt financing; a constant cost of capital as the buyer wouldn't shift funds based on where they buy; a 10-year hold of the property and that the property would be a nonprimary residence.

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Pricing data were based on city center properties of equivalent size. An investor looking to buy in Rio de Janeiro likely doesn't consider Rio's favelas viable options, so data skewed by that cut of the housing stock isn't useful. In basing the numbers on the prime cut of housing markets from Kiev to Manhattan, the resultant valuations are more comparable as investment options.

Purchase costs included transaction costs. In Geneva, that represents an effective 0.36% hike on the paid price, while in Seoul, buyers pay 20.88% above the property's base. Here, for example, transaction fees include housing bonds, legal fees, registration tax, acquisition tax, estate agent's commission, education tax, stamp duty and a special tax for rural development. Suddenly, a $500,000 apartment has a real cost of $604,400.

Yearly operating costs and maintenance were valued at 10% of rental yields across markets, a standard estimation in pricing calculations. Projections for the future value of the home were calculated by annually compounding the original capital value based on each respective country's five-year average trailing gross domestic product growth rate and inflation, as calculated by the International Monetary Fund, which has a good rate of correlation to housing price growth.

Cash flows were predicted by the annual rental yield minus operating costs and maintenance. Bangalore had the highest rental yield. There, landlords can command a 9.7% return per year on the value of their property something that undoubtedly stokes the jealousy of countrymen in Mumbai, where the strict rent controls of the local Maharashtra Rent Act beat rental yields down to 3.27%.

After 10 years, when it came time to sell, we tacked on capital gains taxes and sellers' costs--something that's a serious headache in Moscow, where sellers' costs amount to 18% of the sales price; far better to live west of Russia in Latvia, where sellers' costs are 3% and capital gains nil.

As N.Y.U. Stern School of Business finance professors Anjolein Schmeits and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh point out, this system of calculation doesn't discount for risk and volatility. For the purposes of this article we decided not to adjust for these elements in part because many of the markets have undergone such dramatic transformations in the last 10 years that calculating a beta rating--what an economist would use to measure an asset's volatility against the market--wouldn't accurately represent the housing markets of rapidly developing countries like India or Latvia, for example.

World's Most Expensive Homes 2007

World's Most Expensive Homes 2007
Matt Woolsey 10.15.07, 6:00 AM ET

In Pictures: World's Most Expensive Homes Most Expensive Homes In The U.S. London's Most Expensive Flats Canada's Most Expensive Homes Eastern Europe's Priciest Properties Popular Videos The Material Girl Cashes In Oprah's Movie Mistakes Banks Look To Boost Credit Markets ChinaÂ’s National Congress Priciest Pad On Billionaire's Row Get quotes Most Popular Stories World's Most Expensive Homes 2007 Best Cities For Jobs Kids' Dream Job Salaries How Not To Behave At Work Where The Rich Bank Their Money

Along Australia's Gold Coast and across the French Riviera, they sit above the beach offering extraordinary views of the sea. In the U.K. they are palaces that humble the Queen's Belgravia mansions.

Others range from landed estates throughout continental Europe to nature preserves in Zambia.

These are some of the world's most expensive properties, and the prices are as unique as the homes. Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan's Aspen ski lodge lists for $135 million, while 6,000 miles away, a 64-room Istanbul waterfront mansion asks $100 million.

"You're definitely talking about the highest end of the market here," says Joshua Saslove of Joshua & Co., an Aspen, Colo.-based affiliate of Christie's Great Estates. "The net worth of the buyers and the sellers is such that they can do whatever they want."

Feeling a little less flush? A modest $18 million will get you South Africa's priciest pad. But you'd better act quick; with international real estate company Knight Frank calling the country one of the quickest growing real estate markets, that affordability could soon change.

For something a little more "Old World," a Romanian castle, built in 1212 and once home to Vlad the Impaler (the inspiration for Count Dracula), can be had for $140 million.

Buyers' Bios
Whether they're plunking down $20 million or close to $200 million, in Hong Kong, New York or Rio de Janeiro, potential buyers are generally cut from the same cloth.

They are wealthy globetrotters looking for a second, third or fourth home, and don't mind gassing up the jet if it means owning a beautiful property. Americans, Arabs and Europeans have long bought getaways across the globe, but increasingly the rising wealth in China, India and Russia is raising the world's luxury watermark.

And while no one besides Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal has ever shelled out more than $100 million for a home (he did so in 2005, when he snapped up a Kensington townhouse for $127 million ), there are plenty available.

Dream Homes
Though it hasn't yet been built, Tim Blixseth is asking $155 million for his planned Montana lodge. He says that several members of the Forbes 400 have already expressed interest in what will be a 53,000-square-foot stone-and-wood mansion in the billionaire's members-only Yellowstone Club.

But until Blixseth finishes construction in 2008, this year's top property can be found in Beverly Hills, Calif. For $165 million, a buyer gets a 75,000-square-foot villa once owned by William Randolph Hearst.

Dishing The Data
For the third consecutive year, Forbes.com compiled lists of the world's most valuable properties on the market in every continent, excluding Antarctica. We scoured international real estate listings and spoke to top brokers around the world, restricting our list to homes and apartments, not including apartment buildings or plots of land. We allowed for some commercial properties such as ranches or vineyards, but only if the property also featured a residence worthy of the list.

Still, discovering every top-tier property is impossible. Many owners sell their homes only to preselected buyers, and hide their asking and sales prices. This can help owners conceal the value of a home for tax purposes, and keeps fellow aristocrats from regarding them as gauche for announcing a $100 million property to the world.

In France, for example, this year's highest listing is $65 million for an elegant Cote d'Azur gem perched above the port of Saint Jean, with views of Beaulieu and Monaco.

But realtors say there are many more available on the sly.

"We have chateaux priced at more than 50 million euros ($65 million)," says Thierry Journiac of Terra Cognita who said owners of the country's priciest properties very rarely make public listings. "But, in general, the most expensive estates in France are private mansions inside Paris called 'hotels particuliers' with prices which can be above 100 million euros ($130 million)."

Canada's Most Expensive Homes

Canada's Most Expensive Homes
Lauren Kerensky 10.15.07, 6:00 AM ET

While the subprime problem south of the border continues to eat away at America's housing markets, homeowners across Canada are enjoying strong sales.

Those in cities like Calgary, which boasts a robust local economy thanks to the oil and gas sectors situated there, and Toronto, the country's financial headquarters, in particular, are reaping the rewards of a luxury housing boom.

Chew on this: Based on sales activity in the first half of 2007, the Canadian Real Estate Association expects total home sale transactions this year to rise by 8.1%. More notably on the rise, though, is the national average sales price. It increased from $276,646 Canadian dollars (approximately $283,216 U.S.) in July 2006 to $311,495 Canadian (approximately $318,893 U.S.) in July 2007, a whopping 13% percent. Much of this growth can be attributed to the country's thriving luxury market.

"The high-end market is booming across Canada as more baby boomers inherit large amounts of money, and the Canadian economy is booming right along with it," says Ann Chiasson, an agent with Sea to Sky Premier Properties in Whistler, British Columbia. She adds that reasonable interest rates and a desire for unique, higher-end properties are driving the market as well.

World's Most Overpriced Real Estate Markets

The latest Carriage Trade Luxury Properties Report released by Royal LePage Real Estate Services found that in Greater Toronto, Calgary, and Greater Vancouver--three areas containing many of the nation's priciest properties--1,237 homes going for $1 million Canadian and up were sold in the first quarter of 2007, compared to the 995 sold in the first quarter of 2006. Calgary had the greatest increase--38%--due to an influx of international buyers and local executives putting down roots.

"There's a bit of a bidding war going on," says Gino Romanese, senior vice president of Royal LePage Real Estate, Ltd. "Demand on luxury homes is still outstripping supply, so there's still little inventory in the luxury home market."

Top Spots
If the property is a particularly coveted one, perhaps a waterfront or mountainside estate, it defies all conventional sale patterns. Romanese recalls a home that recently sold for $1.2 million Canadian after being on the market for a mere two days. Homes are currently averaging about two months on the market.

To residents in the U.S., where the $135 million Hala Ranch in Aspen tops the list of most expensive homes, and the asking price for a four-bedroom single family home in many areas can easily begin at $1 million, Canada's numbers may be unimpressive.

While the Great White North did enter the multimillion-dollar housing market slightly later than some other regions, it is indeed following all the usual high-end pricing patterns. That is, numbers are going up.

"One million used to be what we would call a "carriage trade" property as an elite distinction for the home," recalls Elli Davis, a leading Sales Representative for Royal LePage Toronto. "Today I would say it 's closer to $2 million and up. Prices in new condo developments in Toronto are up in the range of $1,000 to $1,500 per square foot, which is a relatively new price range in Toronto in the last few years."

In Toronto, these homes generally range from $2 million Canadian to $15 million Canadian and are located in Forest Hill, Rosedale, the Bridle Path, and Lawrence Park. The priciest pads in the country may not yet command nine figures, but they are impressive nonetheless.

Take The Uplands in Victoria, British Columbia, the locale of the most expensive home in the Great White North. For $28.5 million Canadian, (approximately $28.9 million U.S.) you can call the oceanfront estate, dubbed "Sweet Pea," yours. The seven-bedroom, five-bath estate sits on 2.4 acres of gated property with over 1,400 feet of ocean frontage and its own private pond.

Just as stunning is a nine-year-old property in Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, that boasts two separate wings, an indoor swimming pool, a four-car garage and a fully equipped theater room. The 18,600-square-foot home is sited on 1.12 acres in the exclusive Shaughnessy neighborhood.

Houses in the multimillion-dollar range are becoming much more common in Canada, and buyers are jumping on coveted properties and high-end developments before they're even built. But that is not to say Canadians aren't still afflicted with sticker shock. Lisa Williams, a broker with Century 21-Royal Victoria Realty, has had a $15 million Canadian oceanfront property on the market for over 10 months. "Very high-end homes can certainly take more than a year to sell, and sometimes properties don’t sell," she says. "We have a couple of properties on the high end that have been on the market for a number of years."

All that waiting can call for a price reduction in order to attract interest. No. 9 on our list, the Teddington Park estate, for example, last ranked at the top of this list with an asking price of $22 million Canadian. It has since been reduced to $19.5 million Canadian to attract an acceptable offer. Sounds like even Canadians should start considering that a bargain.